Education (Not Just UT)

mchammer said:
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When I first saw that picture, I thought it was Rand Paul's face with different hair.

The attacks on Ackman and his wife are absurd. Even more absurd are the people calling Chris Rufo a fake because he says he went to Harvard when it was a Harvard extension school. That is the dumbest. He could be a high school dropout who lives under a bridge and blows random guys for a living. It wouldn't change the fact that he exposed Gay as a fraud and in the process exposed the institutional rot and depravity of Harvard and DEI broadly.
 
Inclusion -- good; the more good talent we can get from all segments of society-the better

Diversity -- good, if you're talking about diversity of viewpoints. You can assemble a group of every race, ethnic group, and sexual position preference in the land, but if they almost all basically think alike, you've got garbage for true diversity--you have failed at real diversity. Diverse races, etc. do not necessarily lead to a diversity of viewpoints--what you should be trying to achieve.

Equity -- this is total garbage. Equality must mean equality of opportunity. Equity means leveling/equalizing outcomes. This "Equity" in DEI is the mortal enemy of Excellence. It's keeping the trees all equal by hatchet, axe, and saw.



Here's a better model:

Diversity of viewpoints and thought
Equality of opportunity, as much as practicable--NOT Equity/leveling the outcomes
Inclusion--don't ostracize the weirdos. Some of the great inventions, and a whole lot of great artwork and music came from some real weirdos. Allow some strange and eccentric people in (especially college to create a bit of a Bohemian atmosphere). Meanwhile, don't tolerate anything illegal or harmful to people (especially children)--don't Include that stuff.
 
Yep.

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Sometimes you don't realize you are in the presence of greatness.

After graduating from UT, I never would have guessed which of my professors would become the most famous. I took an ancient through medieval Art History class for my fine arts elective with Denise Schmandt-Besserat as the professor. Very interesting class, and she's a big Francophile. For part of her life, her home church was the great Cathedral at Chartres (even greater than Notre Dame). She's also a really nice human being.

She was already a well-regarded Archaeologist and Egyptologist at the time I took her class. Anyway, her research studying the advent of written language made her known to academics worldwide by the turn of the 21st Century. (Hint--writing came from accounting on clay tablets in the Ancient Near East. She proved it.)

Her book, How Writing Came About, was listed by American Scientist as one of the 100 books that shaped science in the 20th century.

"Cited as one of the top scientific theories of the twentieth century is Denise Schmandt-Besserat's novel approach to the question of how the Mesopotamian writing system known as cuneiform developed. Her work has pushed the horizon of literacy back several millennia. After careful study of ancient "tokens," she realized these fired bits of shaped clay represented a form of communication, the record of ancient business transactions. Previously unaware of their significance, archaeologists had found many tokens in sites dating back as far as the early seventh millennium BCE. By matching the markings on these to later cuneiform symbols, Schmandt-Besserat has shed new light on the evolution of early writing, especially cuneiform, which is now understood to be only in part pictographic. Thus, writing owes its existence principally to accounting, and we owe much to Professor Schmandt-Besserat."

Congrats Professor!

:bevo::bevo::bevo::bevo::bevo::bevo::bevo:
me-276x300.jpg

Move over Indiana Jones--this is a real life great Archaeologist!

Denise Schmandt-Besserat - Wikipedia

Denise Schmandt-Besserat

How Writing Came About by Denise Schmandt-Besserat (Ebook) - Read free for 30 days

1320
 
Chop said:
Sometimes you don't realize you are in the presence of greatness.

After graduating from UT, I never would have guessed which of my professors would become the most famous. I took an ancient through medieval Art History class for my fine arts elective with Denise Schmandt-Besserat as the professor. Very interesting class, and she's a big Francophile. For part of her life, her home church was the great Cathedral at Chartres (even greater than Notre Dame). She's also a really nice human being.

She was already a well-regarded Archaeologist and Egyptologist at the time I took her class. Anyway, her research studying the advent of written language made her known to academics worldwide by the turn of the 21st Century. (Hint--writing came from accounting on clay tablets in the Ancient Near East. She proved it.)

Her book, How Writing Came About, was listed by American Scientist as one of the 100 books that shaped science in the 20th century.

"Cited as one of the top scientific theories of the twentieth century is Denise Schmandt-Besserat's novel approach to the question of how the Mesopotamian writing system known as cuneiform developed. Her work has pushed the horizon of literacy back several millennia. After careful study of ancient "tokens," she realized these fired bits of shaped clay represented a form of communication, the record of ancient business transactions. Previously unaware of their significance, archaeologists had found many tokens in sites dating back as far as the early seventh millennium BCE. By matching the markings on these to later cuneiform symbols, Schmandt-Besserat has shed new light on the evolution of early writing, especially cuneiform, which is now understood to be only in part pictographic. Thus, writing owes its existence principally to accounting, and we owe much to Professor Schmandt-Besserat."

Congrats Professor!

:bevo::bevo::bevo::bevo::bevo::bevo::bevo:
me-276x300.jpg

Move over Indiana Jones--this is a real life great Archaeologist!

Denise Schmandt-Besserat - Wikipedia

Denise Schmandt-Besserat

How Writing Came About by Denise Schmandt-Besserat (Ebook) - Read free for 30 days

1320
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She also shared some interesting stories in class. She loved to go into some of the ancient mosques in the Middle East to view the patterns and artistic designs and writing on the walls (pictures of people and animals and other stuff were forbidden). She'd wrap herself up in the most conservative sort of attire women wore in the area and walk right in like she was a regular. But one time, some zealot didn't like having a woman milling around the mosque looking at the ceiling and the walls, so she was grabbed from behind and felt a sharp dagger digging into her ribs. Discretion was the better part of valor that day, so she asked no questions and left.

She almost had a coronary in class when one student insisted it was the French who blew off the Spinx's nose in cannon practice. (it probably was...) :lmao:
 
The other professor that I had no idea he would become world famous was Karl M. Luttinger. He was only at UT for several years. He was real young and just seemed like 'one of the guys.' He insisted everybody just call him Karl, and he'd crack a lot of jokes. He'd often grab lunch with students at places like the $1 Calzone truck. He didn't give off an aura of super-genius at all, yet he was.

Shortly after I took his class, he discovered/invented the "Luttinger Surgery", which is a mathematical/topological Dehn surgery along Lagrangian Tori in R4 / in a symplectic manifold. (don't ask...)

The Luttinger Surgery has been described as "a very effective tool recently for constructing exotic smooth structures on various 4-manifolds."

Pretty much the entire mathematical world now knows Karl. I didn't know this until I looked it up, but his father was a famous chemist, and his uncle was a very famous physicist (Joaquin M. Luttinger--discoverer of the Luttinger liquid theory of electron interactions in one-dimensional metals, and of Kohn-Luttinger unconventional superconductivity). That is one freakishly smart family.

Once again, sometimes you are in the presence of greatness without even realizing it!

For some light reading over breakfast, Karl's most famous article can be downloaded at the link below:
Lagrangian tori in $\mathbf{R}^4$

:ut::ut::ut::ut::ut:
 
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College Park HS in the Woodlands is where CISD’s academy of science and technology is hosted. One kid from the academy who made 1590 on the SAT, is top 10 overall HS rank, and is leader of robotics team didn’t get into UT’s dept of computer science. Other academy students making 1570 SAT didn’t get in either. UT accepted one student to represent the academy. Pitiful.
 
Without knowing all the facts I say the same mc, pitiful. As I’ve stated on here before I’ve had one progeny completely deserving of admission who got into Johns Hopkins but denied admission into UT that will forever cause me heartache. Pricks. Nevertheless, Hookem. I continue to support Longhorn sports - dunno what is wrong with me.
 
mchammer said:
College Park HS in the Woodlands is where CISD’s academy of science and technology is hosted. One kid from the academy who made 1590 on the SAT, is top 10 overall HS rank, and is leader of robotics team didn’t get into UT’s dept of computer science. Other academy students making 1570 SAT didn’t get in either. UT accepted one student to represent the academy. Pitiful.
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It would be interesting to contrast his qualifications with those of the students UT admitted.
 
Mr. Deez said:
It would be interesting to contrast his qualifications with those of the students UT admitted.
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To be clear, all of these students were admitted, but didn’t get their department 1st or 2nd choice (which mostly were computer science in the school of natural sciences and computer engineering in the school of engineering).
 
Mr. Deez said:
It would be interesting to contrast his qualifications with those of the students UT admitted.
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Probably the same. Comp Sci fills up fast. Most of the time it is the luck of the draw. Most of my grandson's class tried Comp Sci at Texas-Austin and ended up at Texas-Dallas. My grandson went Computational Engineering and was one if the lucky 100 at Texas who were accepted. He will be an Honors Engineering Graduate in 2025.
 
At the upper end, the youth of America are probably smarter than ever. This bodes well for the future.
 
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mchammer said:
College Park HS in the Woodlands is where CISD’s academy of science and technology is hosted. One kid from the academy who made 1590 on the SAT, is top 10 overall HS rank, and is leader of robotics team didn’t get into UT’s dept of computer science. Other academy students making 1570 SAT didn’t get in either. UT accepted one student to represent the academy. Pitiful.
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UT doesn't want excellence they want non-whites. More than that they want blacks. It sounds crude but this is what every corporation states publicly. My daughter's charter high school valedictorian was Turkish male immigrant. He was diverse on some level. He didn't make it into the computer science department. Because he wasn't...
 
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